


If I Dreamed (it would be for you)

by Jarakrisafis



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jarakrisafis/pseuds/Jarakrisafis
Summary: The way he looked at you, as if you were the only thing that mattered. How I wished for him to look at me like that.
Kudos: 2





	If I Dreamed (it would be for you)

**Author's Note:**

> [DA kink meme prompt.](https://dragonage-kink.dreamwidth.org/93926.html?thread=366342374#cmt366342374) M!Aeducan/Gorim unrequited love.

“Did you ever ask him?”

Duran jumps and the room is filled with laughter as he shakes his head at Gorims wife. “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He can’t think of anything he was meant to be asking his Second. There was a meeting with some of the scholars from the Shaperate that wanted his view as a Paragon on the surface world and he’d suggested they also speak to Gorim. Beyond that… Nothing comes to mind.

She frowns, tilting her head, a wry smile crossing her face. “Gorim. You never asked him his feelings for you.”

Duran freezes, the question, or is it a statement, has caught him so unaware he doesn’t have a ready answer. He should pretend not to know what she’s talking about, deny it outright or laugh. He does none of those. Instead a rough sigh escapes him.

She hums, settling onto the couch beside him. “If you want to talk, I’m listening.” She waves away his immediate glance at the door. “Gorim’s with Bhelen and Vartag, they’re giving my son and the Prince a tour of the Smith Quarter. Given how excited the boys were I doubt they’ll be back anytime soon.”

He doesn’t particularly want to talk about it. Not to her. And yet… It’s not her fault she has what he wants. If anyone is to blame it’s the Ancestors for making them both the way they are. If they’d been kind the Ancestors would have seen fit to make them a matched pair.

“You know how Seconding works?” He finally asks after several minutes have passed in silence.

“The basics.” She says. “Political manoeuvring mainly”

He has to smile at the dry tone, she was born on the surface and becoming a member of one of the most influential Dwarven Houses in Orzammar was never something she imagined for herself. She’s a bright spot for both Duran and Bhelen as she ploughs through the other Noble Houses without mercy and when she’s finished stepping on all their toes she can just shrug and say she’s surface raised.

“It’s been a point of honour, generations long, that a member of House Saelac seconds a member of House Aeducan.”

“Keep your best Warrior House on your side by making them feel special?” She interrupts with a smile and raised brow as she kicks her boots off and curls up. He recognises the posture she’s adopted. It seems to be a universal woman thing. Leliana and Wynne would do that on one side of the camp sometimes, it never boded well.

“Yes. Something like that. Point is, myself and Gorim were the only two that were nearly the same age so we were the obvious choice.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, love at first sight?” 

“Absolute outrage actually.” He says with a fond smile. “Your husband spent the first day thrashing my hide in the training grounds and then had the audacity to tell me I clearly needed more work and I could report back at the same time tomorrow.”

“He didn’t?”

“He sodding well did.” Duran shakes his head. “I spent most of that night in a snit at being ordered around by a Warrior caste who’s barely older than me before the logical part of my brain kicked in and pointed out that I did keep losing.” Sure getting him into trouble would have made Duran feel better, it wouldn’t have given him the same satisfaction beating him into the training room sands would.

He can’t really pinpoint when the need to prove himself better became a grudging respect and when that became what he could tentatively call love. It wasn’t like the books and songs say, suddenly there is love and it’s a new thing. No, it just crept up.

“I think we must have been paired for months before I realised things had changed. It was something Trian said one time that got me thinking about it. We’d just got tangled up while fighting, ended up in a heap on the ground, and he walks in and makes an offhand joke about us being comfier in a bed.”

He remembers how Gorim had been utterly silent, his usual commentary on Orzammar missing, at the time Duran had taken it for embarrassment and hadn’t mentioned it.

“I did think about it. For days actually. I couldn’t just ask him, he’d see it as part of his duties whether he wanted to or not.” What exactly could a warrior caste do if they didn’t want to include such duties? Absolutely nothing, their complaints could be twisted to be a negative opinion about the House they serve. Even a simple thing like that could see their status falling and Gorim would have been dismissed from his service. So if he’d asked, Gorim would have said yes without a thought because his wants had to be weighed against the needs of his house. Knowing he’s doing it for that reason, rather than by choice, never sat right with Duran.

She shifts round. “By the standards I’ve seen, you were one of a kind down here. Plots upon plots and you not even taking liberties with what was essentially yours.”

“And that’s everything wrong with Orzammar.” He growls out. “It’s just wrong that’s even considered a normal thing. I can’t remember where I came across this, probably in an old book somewhere. ‘Treat your second like an extension of yourself and afford them the same honour due you and they will lay down their life for you. Treat your second like a lesser being and the dagger in the back might not come from the enemy’.”

“You’re changing things now.” She says after a long moment of silence.

“Yeah. Slowly.” He says. Not soon enough for him, but what’s done is done. He just wishes it didn’t sodding hurt so much. It might have gone quicker if both he and Bhelen had realised they wanted to make similar changes and hadn’t been plotting against the wrong people. Then again Orzammar would probably have been swallowed up in a blight with no Wardens to stand against it.

“I tried hinting I’d be open to more but either my subtle was too subtle or he was never interested.”

“If he did see it, he’s never said a word. I’d like to think he didn’t, your subtle is like a nug cowering under the sofa. Nobody sees it.” 

He laughs. What else can he do. If he doesn’t laugh he might cry and he’d really rather not have a breakdown right now. “There were only two things I regretted when I walked into the deep roads,” he says after a long moment, “not realising I’d been watching the wrong brother, and not saying a word to Gorim.”

He’d spent that last conversation arguing with himself, wondering if he should say anything. In the end he’d decided not to. If they both survived and met again, then he’d say something. 

"When I saw him again in Denerim..." He trails off with a helpless shrug.

"He'd started working at my father's stall when word came of Ostagar.” She says quietly. "Didn't say a word for days until I dragged out of him that this mysterious friend he was waiting for was probably there. Things just moved on from there."

"He thought I was dead and went on with life." Duran understands. He does. He can't shake the knowledge that he would have kept waiting. He'd have waited till the darkspawn reached Denerim because he's a fool. "Whereas I hadn't had a chance to stop, seeing him again was something normal in a world I'd not had a chance to get used to yet." He sighs again, not looking at her as he picks at a loose thread on the cushion he's using. "I hated you."

She stays quiet, letting him continue at his own pace.

"He was there. Alive. We were free of Orzammar and her expectations and then I find out some surfacer had stolen him away from me."

"You hid it well, I thought you were just wary of me as a surface dwarf."

Duran's laugh is a little strained. "He was so sodding proud of you. I couldn't..."

"You couldn't take away his happiness no matter how you felt." She says, one hand coming to rest on his and he just nods.

“You were with child, and his leg was still healing, I knew I wouldn't have a chance because I had to leave and he couldn’t come with me.” 

“I suppose I should admit I was quite selfishly glad that the caravan he was working as a guard for got jumped halfway to Denerim and he got quite friendly with that warhammer. I really didn’t want my new husband wandering off with his shield-brother to fight an archdemon.”

“That sounds ridiculous when you put it like that.” Duran says. Not entirely untrue. But still, he did other things than just fight a darkspawn dragon.

“No, what’s more ridiculous is receiving a letter telling us darkspawn were heading to Denerim on mass and we should leave.” She crosses her arms and gives him a look he recognises, the one that says ‘you’ve been an idiot, good luck working out how’.

“I didn’t want him, and you, getting killed.”

“Uh-huh.” And that’s the ‘nice try, wrong answer’ look.

“I nearly had a heart attack when I ran into him in the market place, when I expected him long gone.” It certainly felt like it as he’d watch Gorim get swept aside by an ogre. He hadn’t been able to find anything to say and by the time he’d fought his way over there Gorim was wiping ogre innards off his blade and looking pleased with himself.

“Your own fault for telling him to run away, of course he stayed. He made sure I got out, and fuck if that wasn’t bad timing,” she says with a grimace, “felt wrong to run away but I was all but waddling by that point.”

“I’m glad he did stay.” Duran admits quietly, it had settled him more than he could imagine, fighting his way through Denerim with Gorim at his side again. Like a piece of himself that had been missing was back in place.

She breaks the companionable silence that has fallen after that with a bark of laughter. “You just made me remember. I’ll treasure the look on your face when Gorim put our son in your arms and just walked away until I return to the Stone.”

“I didn’t know what I was meant to do with him. What sort of advice is: ‘Duran, this is Duran, hold him while I go set the table’? I was terrified of dropping him.” Also trying to get over the fact Gorim had named his first born after him.

She laughs. “You’re his favourite uncle you know.”

“Somebody has to spoil him.” He says with a smile, his earlier melancholy lifting a little. The children are always a joy. And talking of children… “Not a word of this to Gorim, your word as an Aeducan.” Duran says as he hears loud voices echoing down the corridor 

“Are you sure? It might help if he knew.” She says. He nearly snaps at her to obey him before realising, and not for the first time, that he’s talking to a surfacer who doesn’t have the same ingrained habits as one born into Orzammar. The only reason she’s even allowed here is because he claimed Gorim as his shield-brother and formally adopted him into his House. Being Paragon is good for some things at least.

“Very sure.” He says, glancing at the door. “Please?”

“Not a word.” She says quietly as the door opens. “I’m going to go find Gorim and see if he survived.” She grabs her boots and lets herself out, leaving him with the boys and he shakes his head at her masterful retreat. The position of favoured uncle is not one that is maintained without sacrifice.

“Uncle Duran!” The two voices are overlapping, both Endrin and Duran trying to tell him about their day.

“And guess what?” Endrin says as he bounces in place in front of him, the Prince clearly pleased with something.

“What?” Duran asks, looking between the identical smiles of glee.

“Father and Uncle Bhelen said that I can become Endrin’s second.” Gorim’s son says as Prince Endrin nods in agreement.

He has to make an effort to put a smile on his face. “That’s great news.” He says, before watching them both dash off now they had his approval, the door shutting behind them with a heavy thunk.

“I just hope,” he says to the empty room, “that you have an easier time of it than I did.”


End file.
